Final Fantasy 16 producer reveals that the English voice recording is going ahead first

Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has revealed that the English voice recording for the game is about to go underway - before the Japanese. 

During an appearance on Washagana TV (as shared by Gematsu), the Square Enix icon said that the English recording is going first this time around, surprisingly before the Japanese audio is recorded. This is slightly strange as usually, the English - as well as any other language - audio is secondary when dealing with a Japanese studio. 

The developer’s reasoning for this is due to recording the facial movements of the actors via full facial motion capture, which will then be combined with the English language audio recording. Yoshida also mentions that the team is "focusing on British English" for this title. However, he did also say that the Japanese audio recording will also be done soon.

Elsewhere during his appearance on the show, Yoshida - who is also the director of Final Fantasy 14 - gave an insight into the process of developing games in the series noting that: "I’ve been working on Final Fantasy 14 for eight years now, but I’ve never been to a voice recording session."

As for why this is, Yoshida says, stems from him wanting to give his input regarding the actors’ performance due to writing the dialogue, and that this may become confusing to the performers if they are given instruction from Yoshida as well as the sound director. "So I don’t go to voice recording sessions," Yoshida concludes. 

"I’m also not going to Final Fantasy 16 recording sessions, since I’m not the one writing the story." Yoshida explains, "during story meetings, I do say my opinions [...] although the team has been doing a great job of taking my opinions into consideration." 

Final Fantasy 16 was first unveiled during Sony’s PS5 showcase last year however we haven’t seen too much else on it since then. This is probably exactly how Square Enix wants it though as Yoshida has revealed himself: "We don’t want to say something that’s half-baked and cause speculation on the title." 

Despite us not knowing exactly how far along the team is with development, we do know that Final Fantasy 16 is progressing smoothly as Yoshida has also mentioned that the next time we see more on this game, it will be shortly followed by more tangible details about its release. 

Need something new to play until the release of Final Fantasy 16? Take a look at our games like Final Fantasy list for inspiration.